
Writer, researcher, founder and mom. I live and work in Canberra.


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Another writer.

Mehreen Arshi


Writing a book comes in stages. The first is conceiving the world, the narrative, and the reason for writing it. I toil morning and night until the punching of the keyboard becomes a familiar sound, like a steady heartbeat, and the scribbling on paper continues late into the night. I sit at my desk at odd hours, making soul-crunching choices about characters I’ve doted on for years; plotting, drafting, discarding, rewriting, loving and hating the process in equal parts.

Inspiration can strike anywhere. It can descend while stirring the pot, watering the hydrangeas, or washing the day off my face. It may come as a moment of clarity, the solution to a stubborn plot twist, or the spark of a new turn in the story.

Then comes the immersion, when the pouring of thoughts, phrases, and scenes unravel me into frenzy. I abandon mundane tasks or leave a conversation mid-sentence to capture a scurrying thought, one that, if not caught at once, flees into the deepest folds of my brain, never to resurface.

And beneath it all is the heavy editing: the ache of mulling over each sentence, the effort to make the reader feel something. Why must I make the reader sense every drop of sweat dripping off the underarms, or the terror that roots a character in place, or the yearning for a lover’s caress along the arm and into the crook of the elbow? Because I know these details create a pool of imagination in which readers immerse themselves and feel the weight of story.

When all this is done, comes the dressing up of the work. It is for the critique of beta readers, feedback givers, and literary agents. This is when I steel myself to offer up that carved-out piece of my soul that is my book for “constructive criticism,” bracing for the deluge of comments and rejections that follow once I step, trembling, into the icy pool of judgment.

Between creation and final finesse lies a stage few talk about. It is what keeps me up in those hours of the night when even the ghosts take an intermission. It is murky territory that can make or break an artist, a place where questions wait with gaping mouths, ready to swallow my sanity whole.

This is where I abandon the fear of how the carved-out part of my soul will be received, to face a new terror: what if no one wants to look at the precious piece of my soul at all? Now begin the onslaught of questions. “Why would someone read my story? Should I mould it to attract an agent, adjust the setting, add a cultural trope, make it more ‘relatable’?”

If I do not tread carefully, I can slip and compromise the very core of my work. It is easy to spend days and nights crafting something, only to question, at the end, its reason for existence. As a writer, I have become extremely wary of this murky territory. I have struggled and been thrown around by these waves that dictate how the work should be changed to satisfy the subjective needs of the industry. That I should change my narrative to something more palatable or even expected of me, or choose a setting that is more relatable, familiar to my adopted Australian land. Maybe I should include a cultural trope to make it more relatable to those around me. Is it because this would make my work easier to pitch to an agent? Validate it because others can relate to it instead of challenging the bounds of their knowledge?

As a writer from diverse background, am I writing just to chase an agent or to bring a unique new perspective on a part of the world lesser known? Bogged down by these questions, I lose sight that my job is not to appeal to a demographic, be appealing to an agent, or to write only what is relevant today and about familiar territories. In short, my ethnicity should not define the bounds of my work.

These are issues I grapple with day in and day out. After a long and hard look at my own fears and insecurities (however real they may be in the publishing world) I have come to realise that these fears should not define my work as an artist. They should not scare me into fitting a mould, nor alter the bounds of my creativity. Most importantly, these questions should not shape my narrative into someone else’s idea of what it should be.

A story is a story. It lets me enter the realm of imagination, fantasy, and speculation. It also transports me into realities seldom experienced by the majority. I should not question whether the reality I depict in the book, unfamiliar for many, will be accepted by the reader. That is not the purpose. I can remain aware of the reader, letting my work connect and resonate without bending the story to fulfill expectations or be agreeable to a specific narrative.

I must trust the work itself despite these doubts, letting it stand as a reflection of my vision rather than anyone else’s expectation. So I return to the desk, to the familiar rhythm of keys and the late-night scribbling. The doubts do not vanish. They simply learn to sit beside me, quieter now, as I write.

In the end, the work that emerges is not someone else’s idea of how my narrative must feel, sound, or read. It is simply an invitation for the reader to explore and face the uncomfortable truths of life comfortably.


Writing.

The Madness and Mercy of Writing a Book